The Rest Of Averland III ...Black Cloth Walk through

While I was working through the process of highlighting the black cloth portions of the Averland Commission I thought I would document my process and share it with you.

First I must give credit where it is due.  I did a ton of online research looking for different techniques of highlighting Black...most of which are complete crap that at best give you a model that is more Grey than black.  Eventually I stumbled onto a youtube video that displayed a "technique" that I thought was worth giving a try.  While this video shows a painter working on a rather large figure ... the techniques he employs work very well on 28mm minis as well.  Take a look and see what you think... (warning the music is terrible (IMO) but you don't need to listen to see what he's doing)

The Rest of Averland ...Part II

Alright...lets carry on with thebinman's Averlanders.

Some of this batch of figures really require an additional color beyond the black, yellow, and white...figures that seem more like peasant that have "rough" cloth on as well as figures representing a Game keeper...and an archer that looks a lot like Robin Hood who pretty much demanded green clothing,  So this series of pictures shows the whole group with all the additional base colors in place.  I've also had time to highlight the flesh areas on all the figures up to near completion...I'll go back and do a final highlight as one of my last tasks.

Here are the group shots...

Warhammer Skirmish Homebrew fun game

Howdy all,

Last night I managed to convince a couple of my buddies to have a game of Oldhammer...and we opted to do something a little different....we played a total skirmish game.  I home brewed a set of rules using 3ed as the base with some input from Rogue Trader and Realms of Chaos as well as other ideas that randomly popped into my head.  The idea was to have a fairly fast flexible game with smallish units (8 max).  I think we succeeded...and most importantly we had a lot of fun doing it.

The forces engaged consisted of Dwarfs and Humans (my 5th ed Brets) on the side of light...commanded by Brian....and Chaos Dwarfs and Orcs and Goblins on the side of Chaos...commanded by Tom.

Here are a few pictures of the nights activities...sorry for the quality...they are all done with my iPhone and under the crappy florescent lights in my garage.

Here is an overview of the table with Tom starting to move his forces of Chaos (chaos dwarfs and O&Gs) onto the table...

No smart ass comments about the exercise bike in the background...

As you can see we had a fairly dense set of ruins in the center of the table representing a burned out village...this is composed of card building from Dave Graffam.

Bitz Box Bonanza!

Howdy all...

A brief respite from the Bretonnian bombardment....

During a recent troll through the depths of eBay I came across one of the Marauder MM32/34 Goblin Wolf Riders that I am still missing.  This set is one of my long term projects and finding the last few has proven to be a challenge....though a fun one :) so I was pretty happy to find this guy from a seller in Germany...

  Sure he doesn't look that great now...but he should clean up nicely and will look great when he joins his brethren.

...but thats not the point of this post...as I often do when I find an overseas deal that I can't pass up...I looked at the sellers other listing to see if I can combine shipping and pick up a couple of things at once.  One of his listing was for a pile of bits from classic Marauder and Citadel figures.  I threw in a low ball bid and waited...and scored a win!  I was pleasently surpirsed and it cost me less than $4 US...plus a share of the shipping of course.

A heavy envelop arrived today from Germany so I quickly popped it open and was quite excited as I shifted thru the pile.  Here were a bunch of pieces of classic figures that I would never have the ....uuummm... "intestinal fortitude" to butcher myself....and now I won't have too!

Fair warning....if the sight of mutilated Classic figures is disturbing to you then go no further!

Here is the pile as I dumped out onto my work surface....

Ummmm...heaping pile of lead.....yyyuuummmm

...Go ahead...take a moment and see what you can pick out....I'll wait a minute....

(whistle...whistle....)

You Good?  Ready to see what we got here? ....ok here goes....

First your obligatory pile of random limbs and feet...

Mostly Plague Bearer parts...

 Then there are a few random warrior types

I'm pretty sure Orylgg just showed that guy on the left on his blog...

 Here we have a Chaos warrior missing an arm...part of a Battle Lord on the right...and a mystery figure in the middle...anyone know who he is?

Here are the Plague Bearers that used to belong to some of those feet...

Having never seen these figures in the flesh I've never had much interest in them...but now that I see some first hand...they do have a lot of character!

There are also a few dismembered Orcs...real classics here...

 ...including a villager...a standard... and a mage...

Next there are a few chopped up beastmen...

...this includes some of the Marauder Beastmen...I'm working up a unit of them so this might be useful for adding some variety to the rank and file.  There is also a couple of classic Iron Claw beastmen.

And here is the part I'm most excited about....the upper torsos of no less than 7 Marauder MM90 Chaos Dwarfs...(plus one CW torso...)

I see some Badass Bull Centaurs in my future!

These will be great for conversions...These are figures I would never cut up on my own but having it done for me minimizes the guilt and opens up a lot of possiblilities for mixing with the other MM90s and even Clam's Ewal Dvergar....oh yeah...this is going to be fun!

...now to find the time....sigh

...back to the batch painting!

Cheers,

Blue

Johann...nuff said!

Well I had wanted to wait a couple of days before posting this up....but I just can't!  this figure is just TOO good! This Chaos Dwarf which has been named Johann by Clam and the Sculptor, John Pickford, is a special one.  John Sculpted this figure on his own, just for fun, when Clam was just starting to contemplate the range which would become know as the Ewal Dvergar.  It didn't really fit with the multi-part Core Warrior range that Clam was interested in creating but when John shared the sculpt with him Clam couldn't pass up the chance to have it cast up....

...and I'm Glad he did. This is one of those figures that I fall in love with when I first hold it in my hands...figures like this are few and far between...the Ratnik Dwarf Minstrel...MM15 Dwarf with Arquebus...MM90 Mage and Skull face...are a few of the others that have stirred such feelings.  While this feeling can be great motivation...it can also create some anxiety for the painter.  I was intimidated by the figure...the level of detail is quite impressive...and I didn't want to FUCK it up!

...in fact, with Johann, this anxiety began even before that...with the Johann figure you have choices to make..before you paint!  The figure is cast as one piece and looks like this...

Note: Picture blatantly stolen from Clam's Blog (I hope you don't mind man!)

 Its very cool like this...look at that Breast Plate!  But since it is a dwarf, John felt obligated to include an option for the figure to have a beard...so he sculpted up this add-on piece...

Again...thanks Clam for the pic

Again...he looks very cool with that stylish beard...a beard which any self respecting dwarf...chaos or no...could appreciate.  But it covers up the exquisite sculpting on the breast plate...what to do...what to do?!



Well I couldn't decide....I wanted it both ways...so I took a risk and attempted to sculpt a GS beard onto the first figure that would look like a beard...but that could also be believable as hair for the face on the Chest too.

Here is what I ended up with...

This is actually my own picture....

Ok...hurdle one passed...now to figure out a color scheme for this figure....again I was paralyzed by the options...so much detail..particularly on the Shield, which we haven't even discussed yet, as well as the breast plate, and shoulder pads. What colors would suit them best?!  In the end I fell back on colors that I know well and love.  My typical blue and a nice medium gray for the highly detailed parts.  I felt that these colors  highlighted the best of the model without loosing any of its character with a motley of colors.  I tried to let the quality of the sculpt shine through.

Alright enough yammering from me...here are the detail shots...

Front...."You talkin to me?"

...Here comes the Shield!

There it is! So Sweet!

Alright that shield demands a special mention...it is like a complete sculpture of it own...just a remarkably expressive face...and the depth of the detail made it a joy to paint.  I tried to carry the Red eye theme through the shield, shoulder pads and Dwarf. 

There is a good teaser of the shoulder pads...

And a Detail of the Right Shoulder pad.

So there he his...Johann in all his glory.  You will notice that I based him on a 30mm Round lipped base...Thats because I don't see Johann joining a CD unit like the others...he is stand alone...in fact I might just find a pedestal I can put him on...so he can oversee work on my painting table.

Next up...something a little different...

Cheers,

Blue

Learning to Crawl...Cavern Crawl That is...Part I

Howdy all...

I was away from home doing field work for my job this last week...and I took along some hobby things... I did some painting at nights and when we had a weather day I decided to try something new...actually playing a game with some of my figures!!??!  I know its a crazy idea...But even this old dog can learn new tricks!

Since Gareth the Grot announced his self written set of rules for dungeon crawling called "Cavern Crawl" (see here) I've been itching to give them a try.  They sound like a good low stress and fairly fast set of rules.  I have no experience with Hero Quest or any of the other Dungeon Crawl type games so this is a first for me.

The first order of business was to pick some characters...both good and bad.  As I had grabbed figures fairly quickly as I left on this trip I simply picked four of my favorite dwarf figures and a selection of Orcs and Goblins for them to slaughter...for the Big Boss BadDude I picked a recently acquired Chaos Wizard and a nasty chaos hound for his pet.  The choice of a party composed entirely of Dwarfs kind of misses one of the great points of the Dungeon Crawl games...the diversity of races and classes...but I had to work with what I had.  So I made one of my Dwarfs a "Knight"...one a "Mage"...one a "Barbarian"...and one a "Ranger."  This way I would get a feel for most of the classes...if not the different races.

So lets  meet our Heroes (Fair warning...I'm terrible with making up names...sorry about that...)  Covering the slinging of spells for our heroes is Magnison the Mage

Wielding a a large axe and looking for some heads to crack....we have Yorin Yellowbeard ...the Dwarf Knight

Filling out the Head Bashing section of the party is Yorin's slightly unbalanced brother Florin Flamebeard...Dwarf "Barbarian"

Along for the ride...and handy with a bow is their cousin Dorek...the dwarf Ranger...

On the Side of Darkness...we start at the Bottom with the near worthless minions of the evil tyrant our heroes will be attempting to kill...a couple of Goblins...

Slightly bigger...slightly meaner...and slightly stupider...are the Orc minions... both archers and warriors.

trying to keep a handle on these minions are two slightly meaner Orcs....namely ....Larlog the Lasher (chieftain) and Uorglock (captain)

Defending our villianous leader...and keeping is feet warm at night...is his faithfull pet Fluffy (direwolf)

And finally...the master of disaster himself....Drakenhoff the Dark (Archmage)...

Now that we have met our cast of characters...lets look to the playing area.  As I wanted this to be a fairly fast and furious game I choose to keep the playing area quite small...only a few rooms and hallways...Here is the layout.

Quite a small "Cavern" but it should be big enough to allow me to get a feel for the mechanics of the game...and have a bit of fun in the process.

In the next post we can look at the beggining of the gane in Earnest!

Cheers for now!

Blue

Lead Painters League Round 8: Dwarf Adventurers II

Hello all,

Sorry for the delay in getting this weeks LPL entry up here on the blog...once again "real" life conspires to make my life as difficult as possible.  I'm been spending at least half of each week out in the field getting nothing painting related done...and of course I am frantically trying to get the 10 figures for LPL round 10 done to a decent standard.

Anyway...here is my round 8 entry...consisting of a more of the excellent Marauder "Norse" dwarfs that have been assembled for my warband project.  This team felt like quite a rush job to me but it seems to have done well in the contest.  I was up against a wonderful entry by one of my favorite LPL contestants: Lt. Hazel.  His works are a constant source of inspiration and this one was certainly of very high quality.  In fact I was quite surprised that voting went my way this week...so I would like to take the opportunity to applaud Lt.'s work on his entry.

Well after all that...here are the dwarfs...once things settle out a bit I'll get a shot with the first group of Dwarf Adventurers.

Ok...off to work on round 10 some more...I can't wait to get some decent sleep when this is all done with!

Cheers,

Blue

LPL Round 6: Happy Easter

Howdy all, With Round six of the LPL kicking off on Easter Sunday I felt obligated to do something interesting...and I was looking for an excuse to paint some more of the great Ratnik dwarfs that I have recently received from LAM. Luckily for me one of the sets of dwarfs that I ordered included the two guys that are designed to carry the dragon egg. A quick switch of cargo and we have a great centerpiece for the team. After that it all just fell into place....a religious fanatic preaching in front....a dwarf with a wheelbarrow that could be filled with some chocolate and one playing an over sized horn to announce the arrival of the egg ...and the team was ready. Here they are:

I've continued to experiment with a new fleshtone...and with these guys I feel like I've finally started to settle into the new color...I went a little too pale on the priest and actually had to back out and re paint some parts of his head to mellow the color a little bit. (I would love any feed back you care to share about the skin color). Colorwize on the rest of the figures. I opted for slightly more muted tones for these guys...which seems to be a trend with me right now...I still love to paint an obnoxious puff and slash dwarf....but there is an appeal to mo natural colors as well. Im not convinced that I like their white cuffs and hood edges...but at this point I don't see myself changing them...;) Alright off to bed....this fieldwork is kicking my ass... Cheers, Blue

Lead Painters League Round 2

Howdy!

We have just started round 3 of the LPL so now I am free to post pictures of my Round 2 entry.  Here again I'm working on some figures for a skirmish band so I was able to use the nice 30mm Round lipped bases...which I must admit look really nice.

Anyway...this week I chose to work up a team of Dwarfs...The ones I picked have a very "Norse" feel...lots of Chainmail....no Puff and Slash....Big axes ect.  They didn't really fit with my other units so they are perfect for a small skirmish band.  This has also forced me to attempt a more subdued palette...which actually turned out to be a nice change of pace.

Anyway...enough Jibb-jabber...here is my entry photo

 

And here is the "Studio" shot of this crew

This group includes several of my favorite Marauder Dwarfs...(do I say that about all Marauder Dwarfs? :)) the guy with the Flail was a figure that took me a very long time to track down...and the crossbow dwarf has a wonderful expression.  The Wizard is a Citadel dwarf from the "Dwarf Adventurer" range.  Painting the Magic Sphere was a real challenge for me...Its got at least 4 coats of paint on it and I'm still not 100% happy with the results....but time was tight and I think it works with the subdued color scheme.

The dwarf Wizard and the Dwarf with the Bow are a great example of figures that were made for use with WFB but are no longer supported by the much more rigid "Fluff" that GW has forced on gamers in later editions...Thats why I'm happy to escape the Warhammer World with this Skirmish Band....it will be used with David Kings excellent set of rules "Skulldred"

Cheers,

Blue

Lead Painters League Round 1

We have just wrapped up the first round of the sixth Lead Painters League (LPL) over on the Lead Adventure Forum (LAF).  This years 46 contestants facing off on a weekly basis...and let me tell you the quality of the competition this year is quite intimidating...there are many heavy weights on the roster and they always pull out all the stops for the LPL.

Round 1 of this years LPL was a themed round...this time its was "Old Lead"...and to acquire the bonus points for matching the theme the team submitted had to date from before 1991.  Luckily for me that includes almost ALL my figures....that said I picked some of the oldest ones in my collection...a team of Marauder MM20 orcs.  We saw one of these in my Brush Slave League first entry...like those these will form a portion of my Evil Skirmish band that I am working up for Skulldred and/or other skirmish games.

This contest is also one that really appreciated the use of terrain in the photography.  This is a new area for me to explore and I'm learning a lot (mostly the hard way...:)) about what it takes to make an effective shot using terrain.

Here is my entry picture:

Click the picture for the larger version...

It looks like I could do better with the lighting...the guys on the right are a bit shaded for my liking....and the gap from where the hill meets the table annoys me...but other than that I'm pretty happy with how my terrain shot worked out.  One thing I have figures out is...I NEED more terrain...to mix things up and make more interesting pictures.

When it was unclear whether I would get the terrain shot done in time I also took a more traditional "studio" type shot...here is a copy of that.

Sadly these guys did not secure me a victory for round 1.  I was matched up with Drachenklinge's wonderful entry which shows a group of knights in training...complete with training dummies and all kinds of other wonderful little details.  His entry really told a story in a single photograph...mine is more of a studio shot with some stuff in the background....I'll file that lesson away for future use.  It was a very close contest with the final count coming out at 219 to 211 votes...pretty close for such a large voting poll.  Cheers to you Drachenklinge!

Anyway...back to the painting table...LPL round 2 and 3 are already submitted...round 4 is taking FOREVER to finish but I'm almost there...then its on to Round 5...which is the Tolkien themed round...I have 10 figures to complete for that round...and a new terrain board to photograph them on...so back to the grind stone!

Cheers,

Blue

Brush Slave League Entry #1

The beginning of March has seen the opening round of the Brush Slave League over on the Chaos Dwarfs Online Forum...and Once again the level of talent displayed by the members of that forum have really impressed me.  If you would like to have a look at this months entries please explore this link:

http://www.chaos-dwarfs.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=70

For my entry I submitted three green skins that are the first members of a skirmish band that I am putting together.  Once again I have chosen to use some of the classic Marauder Sculpts for this entry.  The Orc is from the MM20 range and the two goblins are from the MM30 series...the bat sheild is from the Marauder undead/chaos sprue.  The goblins in particular are personal favorites...the whole range is just full of character.

So without further delay...here they are:

Cheers for now!

Blue